CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION
Francesco Mazzaferro
Cennini, the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade
and the two different worlds of the Serbian translations in 1950 and 1999
 |
| Fig. 1) The first part of the Serbian version of Cennino’s Book of the Art, translated by Dragoljub Kažić |
THE CENNINI PROJECT
This post is a part of the "Cennini Project", dedicated to the international reception of the Book of the Art since the first printed edition in 1821. Click here to see the list of all the posts.
***
***
The historic
identity of each of our countries combines different souls, and this is good by
itself. In the case of Serbia, these souls can perhaps be identified with the
attraction exercised by the culture of two countries: France and Russia. Often, art
scholars publishing art literature texts consider it as an opportunity to search
for the roots and even interrogate themselves on the historical legitimacy of
their countries. For his historical location between the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, Cennini was the primogenial author of art literature, and the publication of translations in other languages was often the time when various cultural areas confronted themselves with the problem of the origin of their art. This was the case also for the two translations of Cennini in Serbia, of
which one (that of 1950) was an example of the attractiveness of the modern
French cultural world and the other (1999) testified the uninterrupted influence
of the Slavic-Bizantine world over centuries. Unfortunately neither translation,
instead, offers us new perspectives on Cennino himself and his Book of the Art.
Although
the two translations of Cennini belonged to different ages and to very
different historical situations, they both revolved around the Belgrade academic
world, which was gathered around a series of institutions that have inevitably taken
different institutional forms, but obviously worked on artistic techniques
throughout the entire second half of the past century. It was first of all the Academy of
Fine Arts (Академија ликовних уметности) of Belgrade, where the painter and
professor Nedeljko Gvozdenović taught at the end of World War II, and instructed
two of his students to translate the Book of the Art of Cennini into Serbian; one of
the two students, Dragoljub Kažić, became later on professor of photography in
the same institution, which was transformed in 1957 into the Academy of Arts of
the People's Republic of Serbia (at that time one of the constituent states of Yugoslavia),
and then became the University of Arts in Belgrade in 1973. In the same
institution graduated in 1955 Milorad Medić, who got there the professorship of
restoration in 1977. He prepared a 3-volume collection of ancient writings on
painting techniques, including a new translation of Cennino, published in 1999,
the year of his death. All Cennino translations materialized therefore in the
same environment.
Dragoljub Kažić and Ivanka Prikelmayer
The first Serbian
translation was made from Cennino’s French edition of 1911 – the one that
knew a global success thanks to the preface by Auguste Rénoir - by Dragoljub
Kažić [1] (Драгољуб Кажић) (1922-1999) and Ivanka Prikelmayer [2] (Иванка
Прикелмајер) (1921-unknown date of death). The two young researchers
definitely worked in coordination. The translations probably were their master theses,
and were released by the university publisher Globus as two separate booklets (respectively of 51 and 46 pages) outside
a series [3]. Kažić translated the chapters 1-38 and included them in the booklet
1, which also encompassed a short text on Rembrandt by the French painter and art
critic Eugène Fromentin (1820-76). Ms Prikelmayer translated the second part of
Cennini’s Treaty, which was published in the booklet 2.
The booklet
n. 1 was preceded by a brief introduction, not necessarily by Kažić, which
Marija Rosic has translated for us in English (for the full text, see the end
of this post). It starts as follows: "The
volume which in this issue contains a part of Cennini's Treatise on Painting,
and Fromentin’s study of Rembrandt as a supplement, does not have the relevance
of a practical textbook. It has arisen from the need to offer the opportunity
to students of the Academy of Fine Arts to broaden their artistic culture."
Although this was an initiative with a clear didactic purpose, the days had
passed when Cennino was studied in the academies in order to restore the use of
medieval techniques by contemporary painters, like it had happened in Hungary during the first decades of the century: therefore, it was stated right from the
beginning that this was not a manual
on which students had to do practice on painting, but rather a booklet for
student use, published to offer them supplementary materials. Although I have
only limited chances to verify it, it was probably a translation without great
philological pretensions. Apparently, there was not much scientific (for
example, there were no notes): the inside front cover shows the words
"printed as manuscript" (штампано као рукопис). Moreover, it was
perhaps (as many things related to university education) an initiative with a
bit confused purposes or, like stated in the introduction, a rather "occasional" publication. The
introduction continued by stating that "in this sense, its character cannot be reduced to the mere presentation
of historical material and translations from world literature". It was
a clear distancing from the classic concept of artistic literature. Yet the
text added: "Its character will
rather be extended to include issues we are dealing with today, in the form of
polemics." So, to sum up: the translation was not meant to teach contemporary
painters how to use the techniques contained in the Treaty of Cennino, nor did
it want to focus on the specific aspects of art literature, but simply aimed at
offering information of general nature to the students, allowing them to dwell
on new questions for debate.
The interest for Cennino was in the discovery
of nature at the time of Giotto: "Known
in art history by his Treatise, Cennini noted down all technical experiences
used in the work back then, and thus his book contains everything that Giotto’s
tradition comprised in terms of techniques and methods. Even more than that, in
Cennini’s work there already are all the elements of a new artistic understanding
of the attitude to nature, in contrast to the earlier Byzantine one, which
probably served as a starting point, and for which reason it would be
interesting to make comparisons with the technological processes used in our
medieval art in the period when the trend towards realism was starting to take
shape.”
 |
| Fig. 2) Master of Nerezi, Pieta, Church of St. Panteleimon, 1164 |
In Italy, we
are accustomed to consider Cennino as the one who wrote that Giotto translated
the art from the Greek to the Latin, thereby cutting the art in the West from
the one in the East. It should, however, not be surprising that in Belgrade the
opposite problem was raised of proving Cennino’s conformity with the pictorial techniques
of orthodox painting, which was perceived as being part of its culture; the reference to Cennino as the
Western equivalent of the moment when the Slavonic-Byzantine art discovered
aspects of realism was clearly important in the Serbian art history, as there were
examples of frescos, as in the church of San Panteleimon in Gorno Nerezi (Fig. 2), of
heightened personal characterization. The same interest to the discovery of
realism in the Slavic-Orthodox iconography (however referred to the eighteenth
century was also the focus of the studies of the Bulgarian scholar Emmanuel Moutafov), in another post on this blog. However, in the first translation of
Cennino in 1950 this remained a fleeting reference of a few lines only.
Kažić
became a famous art photographer and graphic, and professor at the same
university in Belgrade. About Ms. Prikelmayer we do not know much: she came
from a family of pharmacists in the town of Valjevo, her studies had been much
delayed by the war, she had graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and
dedicated later on her entire professional life to contribute "to the collective
drafting of encyclopaedias about art" [4]
 |
| Fig. 3) The second volume of the translation of Cennini, edited by Ivanka Prikelmayer |
The Painting School of Belgrade
Kažić had
graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1948 with Professor Nedeljko
Gvozdenović (1902-1988). We must therefore focus on the latter. It is likely that
he instructed its students to prepare a Serbian translation of Cennino, along
with a few pages by Eugène Fromentin. Why did he? We can only guess.
 |
| Fig. 4) Nedeljko Gvozdenovic, Still Life in Green, 1938 |
 |
| Fig. 5) Nedeljko Gvozdenovic, Woman at the table, 1938 |
Gvozdenović
was anything but unknown: he was the animator of a pictorial stream, the
Belgrade School, still celebrated today for the intimate profile and the
interest for nature in painting. He had other two features that were perfectly
in line with the possible decision to task two of his students to translate
Cennino in Serbian: the love for traditional painting techniques and that for
foreign languages [5]. Presumably, the decision to translate Cennino from
French was a reflection of the success of French culture in those years’
Serbia. Gvozdenović most probably knew Cennino from his youth. In fact, he was
trained in Munich in the twenties, shortly after the German translation of the Book of the Art by Jan Verkade, and in
Paris in the thirties, where Cennino had become extremely popular thanks to the
success the text had gathered in the French post-impressionist world (Renoir,
Maurice Denis, the Nabis). Since 1940 Gvozdenović was a professor at the
Academy in Belgrade, and perhaps hoped to have the text translated from some of
his students, as it was not yet available in his own language. In the early fifties,
he was already a well-known painter even outside the national borders, and the
Biennale of Venice hosted him, along with other Yugoslav painters, in 1952.
 |
| Fig. 6) Nedeljko Gvozdenovic, Girl in an interior, 1950 |
 |
| Fig. 7) Nedeljko Gvozdenovic, Green panorama, 1953 |
I would
like to highlight that the paintings of Gvozdenovic in the thirties were
strongly influenced by Cézanne and those in the fifties did not correspond to
the ideals of socialist realism that were gaining headway in the Soviet bloc
(which, in truth, Tito's Yugoslavia had left in 1948), and kept an intimate
atmosphere. There was a nostalgic flavour, clearly of a post-impressionist origin,
which explains the interest in the French world and that was also maintained in
the works of the following decades, despite the more geometric stretch.
Yugoslavia was drawing inspiration from the art streams of the first twentieth-century
Europe to search for its own way.
 |
| Fig. 8) Nedeljko Gvozdenovic, View from the Danube, 1957 |
 |
| Fig. 9) Nedeljko Gvozdenović, Workshop, 1960 |
Kažić: the passion for manuals
Dragoljub
Kažić did not become a successful painter, as was also the case for both
Cennino and Fromentin, but like them he turned to be a successful publicist on
artistic techniques. Perhaps this was the only legacy that Cennino left him,
since there was no evidence that he would continue to occupy himself with the
Siena mediaeval painter. He passed through various experiences in the field of
design and graphics (he won numerous awards for posters and book covers, even
outside of Yugoslavia) and wrote on very different themes (he co-authored, for
example, an unusual essay on Egyptian contemporary art in 1964, released in English
and in Arabic, which can be explained by the fact that Tito's Yugoslavia was an
ally of Egypt's Nasser, as a promoter of non-aligned countries in the world)
[6]. Eventually, Kažić became a photographer and was professor of photography
from 1968 to 1987, in the same Academy where he had studied. During those years
he also published numerous photography textbooks used in Serbia for many years,
until digital technology revolutionized techniques.
 |
| Fig. 10) Dragoljub Kažić, Poster for the exhibition of Zbirka Urvater, 1959 |
 |
| Fig. 11) Dragoljub Kažić, Elementary technique of photography, 1973 |
 |
| Fig. 12) Dragoljub Kažić, Elementary technique of photography, 1987 |
Milorad Medić
The second Serbian translation of the Book of the Art of Cennini was published
in the collection in three volumes [7] of "Ancient Manuals on
Painting" (Стари сликарски приручници). The collection was the main work
of Milorad Medić (Милорад Медић) (1926-1999), released respectively in 1999, in
2002 and 2005 (the last two posthumously). It was a collection of writings from
the fifth century until 1700, all presented to the Serbian reader together with
the original texts: in the case of Cennino the Italian parallel text was the
version of the Book of the Art by Franco
Brunello (1971) that, for the purposes of translation was also compared with
the US one by Thompson (1933). The collection was published by the Institute of
the Republic of Serbia for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Belgrade
(Републички завод за заштиту споменика културе - Београд), in a series that had
existed since 1956.
The work, which included overall almost two
thousand pages, was clearly written in order to provide restorers and scholars in
art techniques with the original sources that would help them to understand the
most mechanical aspects of painting production. Medić himself was first of all a restorer,
after studies in Belgrade, and specializations in Brussels and in Ravenna (1958-1959).
In addition to intense restoration activities in Yugoslavia at the National
Museum in Belgrade, he headed for many years important interventions to
preserve Greek-Roman mosaics in the whole Mediterranean area, also in support
of a UNESCO program (1968-1985). Not surprisingly, his collection opens with a one-hundred
page essay he wrote on techniques, with important sections on fresco and
mosaic, and a chronology of the writings on artistic techniques from Pliny the
Elder up to contemporary restoration manuals. He also included many designs
to show the reader how the techniques were done throughout history.
The vastness of the work in three volumes, mostly
published years after the death of the curator, and the origin of the texts
from different linguistic areas suggests that Medić did probably not directly
translate alone the entire body of literature, but resorted also to resources
within the Academy. In the introduction about Cennino, he specifically thanked the philologist and philosopher of aesthetics Streten Petrović (Сретен
Петровић).
 |
| Fig. 13) The first volume of the collection Ancient Manuals on Painting, dated 1999, by Milorad Medić |
For each text reproduced in the collection
Medić featured some introductory pages. The introduction to the Book of the Art (see text at the end of
this post) provided to the Serbian reader some information based on Franco
Brunello’s Italian edition. Brunello was also a restorer, and in the Italian
edition of 1971 he had equally focused on technical issues. In the light of the
debate in recent decades on the nature and purpose of the Book of the Art (Frezzato, Troncelliti, catalogue of the exhibition in Berlin in 2008, Seiler, and finally Broecke) the introduction is perhaps
outdated (and has some inaccuracies or naïve assumptions on the timeline of
Cennino’s life), but it seems useful nevertheless to display the English
translation, always curated by Marija Rosic, to understand the perception which
the Serbian translator had on Cennino’s writing.
If Medić’s concern was to help restorers to
have access to both original and translated texts on the techniques, it is
equally true that his three volumes intended mainly to demonstrate the continuity
of the Greek-Byzantine and Slavic-Orthodox art literature. The first volume
presented the full texts of Heraclius, Theophilus Presbyter and Cennino; The
second volume included several Greek and Serbian sources from 1566 to 1728 (the
First of Jerusalem Code of 1566, the Typikon of the Serbian Nectarius of
1599, the Book of Pope Daniel in
1674, the Hermeneia of the Zografski
family in 1728) [8]. The third one offers the text of the Hermeneia of Byzantine painting by Dionysios
of Fourna, an eighteenth century work whose authenticity was placed elsewhere
in serious doubt, but which was presented here as an original text. In this
collection of mainly Greek-Byzantine origin, Cennino was included as representative of a medieval know-how inheriting the Bizantine tradition. Here the
reading of Cennino was thus all in continuity with other mediaeval art sources
or works on painting that can be characterized as heirs of Greek and Slav
tradition of painting. It was an interpretation that existed in other countries
of the region (Russia, Greece itself, Romania), and had a tradition dating back
to at least the end of Nineteenth century. Think of the Старинные руководства
по технике живописи i.e. “The ancient
manuals on painting technique” (this Russian title must have clearly inspired the
Serbian one of Medić), published in Russia by Piotr Yakovlevich Ageev (Петр
Яковлевич Агеев) in 1887 and presented in the Bulletin of the Imperial Academy
of Fine arts (Вестник изящных искусств) [9] of Petersburg, in three issues of
the bulletin. They contained among others the first Russian translation of part
of Cennino's treatise (conducted from the German version of Albert Ilg). Ageev was also a
restorer. The previous year, he had published a study in the same bulletin,
which was entitled "Technical
introduction to painting: On the ancient colours and the Russian icon painting"
(Технические заметки по живописи. Краски старых и русских иконописцев).
 |
| Fig. 14) The Bulletin of the Academy of Fine Arts of St. Petersburg, Volume V, 1887 |
Belgrade, 1950-1999
Between 1950 and 1999, the dates of the two translations of Cennino's Book of the Art, Serbia experienced different political and social orders,
from the foundation of Yugoslavia to its dissolution. The translations were
conceived in the same academic framework, but testified different professional
interests and cultural sensitivity. From a professional point of view, it is
clear that the translation of 1950 wanted to promote a broad discussion on art
and excluded any instructional purposes on Cennino’s painting techniques, which
was instead at the very centre of the second version of 1990. This has been, in
many ways, the general trend in recent decades: Cennino’s Book has increasingly become a text of interest for restorers and
less and less a subject for aesthetic debate by contemporary artists. From the
cultural point of view, the translation of 1950 testified to the interest of
the Serbian academic world for the French one, while that of 1999 confirmed the
interest of those same circles for the Slavic and orthodox world. These are
issues that need to be touched with a lot of discretion, considering the risk
of their political misuse. There is no good or bad cultural influence. I would
like to repeat what I told at the very start of this article: each of our
countries reflects different souls, and it is good so.
I would like nevertheless to propose a general
interpretative effort of this short history of Cennino’s translations in the Belgrade
academic world, almost entirely based on pure intuition. The translation of
Kažić and Prikelmayer was part of the teaching at the Belgrade Academy in the
early years of the experience of Yugoslavia. These were probably phases full of
enthusiasm and experimentation, but they were also marked by some search for continuity
with the European pictorial world of the early twentieth century, to which
Serbia fully belonged in the years before the World War. Probably, Cennino was
chosen by the leader of the Belgrade painting school, Nedeljko Gvozdenović, not
for a direct interest in the techniques of primitives but mainly because his
pages had become a reference point of Symbolist and post-impressionist painting
in France, Germany and many other European regions, like in central and Eastern
Europe and in Scandinavia, during the first part of the century.
The collection of Medić was published, instead,
when the idea of a common home to all the Southern Slavs (Yugoslavia) had
already imploded under the weight of a decade of economic and financial crisis
and a bloody civil war, and Serbia was looking for a new own identity,
different from that of the previous decades. Cennino was published there as an
author who belonged to the world of the primitives, and perhaps as a testimony
of an ancient single original moment of mediaeval art (despite Cennino’s
proclamations that his master, Giotto, had translated art from Greek into Latin).
While in the fifties the reference points of Yugoslavia were post-impressionist
France and the modern European world - albeit in a combination of innovation
and tradition - in the nineties Serbia’s coordinates were instead directed to the
Slavic-Orthodox tradition and a much elder age, in an obvious search for
identity linked to Eastern spirituality.
 |
| Fig. 15) The third volume of the collection Ancient Painting Manuals of 2005, edited by Milorad Medić |
WE ARE DISPLAYING BELOW TWO ENGLISH
TRANSLATIONS FROM SERBIAN BY MARIJA ROSIC
INTRODUCTION TO THE TREATISE ON PAINTING BY CENNINO CENNINI (1950)
The volume which in this issue contains a part
of Cennini's Treatise on Painting,
and Fromentin’s study of Rembrandt as a supplement, does not have the relevance
of a practical textbook. It has arisen from the need to offer the opportunity
to students of the Academy of Fine Arts to broaden their artistic culture, and
therefore it will feature different characteristics during its occasional
publication. In that sense, its character will not be reduced to a mere
presentation of historical material and translations from the world literature,
but will rather be extended to include issues we are dealing with today, in the
form of polemics.
Cennino Cennini, whose Treatise on Painting is going to be published in the first two
issues, belongs to a group of painters who developed under the influence of
Giotto, as his followers.
Known in art history by his Treatise, Cennini noted down all
technical experiences used in the work back then, and thus his book contains
everything that Giotto’s tradition comprised in terms of techniques and
methods. Even more than that, in Cennini’s work there are already all the
elements of a new artistic understanding of the attitude to nature, in contrast
to the earlier Byzantine one, which probably served as a starting point, and
for which reason it would be interesting to make comparisons with the
technological processes used in our medieval art in the period when the trend
towards realism was starting to take shape.
INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF THE ART BY CENNINO CENNINI (1999)
Cennini’s Il
Libro dell'Arte (The Book of the Art) has been preserved in three
manuscripts. Two of them are kept in Florence - one under the name of
Laurenziana 78.P.23, while the other one is known as the Riccardiana MS 2190.
The third one is in the Vatican and is designated as Ottobonian MS 2974.
The oldest manuscript is the Laurenziana. It
originates from the initial years of the fifteenth century, but it is not quite
certain that it was written by Cennini [10]. Nevertheless, it is considered to
be authentic [Note of the editor: this statement would not be subject of
general consensus today]. Certain pages are missing. The Riccardiana MS is from
the second half of the sixteenth century, it is more complete and better
organized, and the Ottobonian MS is a much later and partial copy of the
Laurenziana MS (from the eighteenth century). Many of the instructions included
in other codices are missing from it.
We know of five Italian editions of Cennini’s The Book of the Art, printed in the
period from 1821 to 1971 under different names [11]. The first edition of 1821
is based on the incomplete Codex Ottobonianus, which was found by Monsignor
Angelo Mai. It was prepared for publishing by Giuseppe Tambroni, but his
version has received a lot of criticism. Yet, Tambroni deserves credit for the
publication of the second edition in 1859, which was prepared by the brothers Gaetano and Carlo Milanesi based on the Laurenziana MS and the Riccardiana MS.
The third edition was prepared by Renzo Simi as late as 1913, in which he
corrected some mistakes of the previous authors. His version of the edition
appeared once again during the Second World War in 1943.
Cennini’s work has been translated into several
languages [12]. The first, Tambroni’s edition of 1821, had two translations
very early on, one into English (1844), and the other one into French (1858).
Then a German edition appeared. There are also two editions in Russian, dated
1889 and 1932, and one in Polish of 1934. In our country, Cennini’s treatise
was translated from a French version. It was printed as a manuscript entitled
Cennino Cennini, Treatise on Painting, for the needs of students of the Academy
of Fine Arts, in two volumes, in 1950 [13].
It is not really known when Cennini’s treatise
was written. The year 1437, noted down on the Laurentiana Codex, seems to be
too late, if the Milanesi Brothers and A. Ilg are correct in their assertions
that Cennini was born in 1372. If that had been true, he would have written his
treatise at the age of sixty-five. Tambroni, however, argues that back then
Cennini could have been in his eighties, because his assumption was that
Cennini had been born around 1360. But this can no longer be verified. We now
know just what Cennini personally wrote about himself, as cited by Vasari in
his writings about the life of Agnolo Gaddi, and what was recorded, on the
basis of two examined documents, by the Milanesi Brothers.
Already in the first chapter of his book,
Cennini writes that he was born in Colle di Val d'Elsa and that for twelve
years, as a small apprentice who studied the art of painting, he was receiving
lessons in the mentioned art from Taddeo’s son Agnolo from Florence, his master
who learned this art from Taddeo, his father, who had been baptized by Giotto
and whose disciple he had been for twenty-four years [14].
In his description of the life of Agnolo Gaddi,
a Florentine painter, Vasari wrote the following in the second edition of his book
in 1568, among other things: "Cennini, son of Drea Cennini, of Colle di
Valdelsa, who studied painting under the same Agnolo, being very fond of the
art, wrote with his own hand, in a book, directions for painting in fresco and
in distemper, with glue and with gum, also how to paint in miniature, and
various ways of laying on gold; which book is in the hands of Giuliano, a
goldsmith of Siena, an excellent master and friend to the arts. And in the
beginning of his book, he treats of the nature of colours, mineral as well as
those prepared from earths, as he was taught by Agnolo his master, being
desirous (although perhaps he did not succeed in learning to paint perfectly)
to know the different kinds of colours, vehicles (temperas), glues, and plaster
(gesso); also what colours to avoid, as being injurious when mixed with others;
and much information besides, of which it is not necessary to speak, all these
things being now well understood, although in his time they were considered
great secrets, and were known only to a few persons. We must not omit to state,
that he does not mention (and perhaps they were not in use) certain colours
prepared from earths, such as dark red earth (terre rosse scure), cinabrese,
and certain vitreous greens. Umber, which is an earth, has also been found
since his time; also yellow lake (giallo santo), smalts, used both in oil and
fresco, and some vitreous yellows and greens, which were not known to the
painters of that age. He also treats of mosaic painting, of grinding colours in
oil to make grounds of red, blue, green...” [15]
According to documents found and published by
the Milanesi Brothers, it is possible to conclude that towards the end of the
century, Cennini moved to Padua, where he belonged to the household of the
"grand gentleman Francesco of Carrara" as the family painter. From
that single reliable document from Cennini’s life, it is known that on 13
August 1398 he was in Padua, where he probably had come a bit earlier, that he
lived in the street San Pietro, with his wife Donna Ricca, daughter of ser
Francesco Valaruchino della Ricca of Citadella. This is confirmed by another
document dated August 19 of the same year [16].
It can be assumed that Cennini wrote his notes
as early as his apprenticeship with Agnolo Gaddi in Florence, and that he
finished his treatise or The Book of the
Art in Padua, where he spent a prolonged period of time, already at the end
of the century. F. Brunello is convinced that Cennini completed his Book of the Art then and there, in that town
in Veneto, already well-known for its scholarly encyclopaedism, because it is
written in the Veneto dialect.
In the first part of the treatise, after the
introductory remarks, instructions begin on how and in which sequence to draw
on panels, how to draw with stiles, how to arrange light and shades, how to
draw on parchment, and on canvas, how to draw by using a lead
"stiletto", how to draw with a pen. Cennini particularly described
how to "tint” paper and how to draw on it, how to prepare transparent
paper and finally, how to learn drawing after great masters. He never fails to
warn that nature should come first and that generally one has to live
temperately.
In the second part, Cennini writes about
grinding pigments, different types of the black colour, about sinopia,
cinabrese, minium, amatito, dragon’s blood, lake, ochre, giallorino (Naples
yellow), orpiment, zafferano (saffron), green pigments, bianco sangiovanni
(Saint John's white), biacca (white lead), ultramarines and about azzurro della
magna (German blue). In the last four instructions Cennini talks about how to
make and preserve brushes (hair pencils).
The third part of Cennini’s treatise deals with
painting in fresco. It elaborates at length on the al fresco painting method,
especially on how to paint the face, human figure and clothes (draperies). He
explained how to paint with the tempera on the wall (in secco), how to paint
mountains, trees, grass, foliage, buildings and how to prepare the colours for
such painting.
In the fourth part, Cennini explains how to
paint in oil on walls, and how to paint on wooden panels and iron; how to
prepare oil for tempera and for the ground and how to dry it in the sun. In a
separate section he describes how to grind and use colours in oil, how to gild
tin, and make ornaments, and separately how to make and gild the glories of
saints in relief.
The fifth part of the Treatise contains just
nine instructions, which talk about making various kinds of glue. This part of
the book, by the way, looks like an introduction to the sixth part,
particularly due to Chapter 104, which talks about the time required for
learning to paint and about how nature, through constant training, is
transformed into a good experience.
The sixth part of Cennini’s treatise is the
last and the most extensive one, and by complexity and content it is varied and
rich. It contains instructions, first, on the preparation of wood panels for
painting and on laying grounds of plaster on them. He explains then how to draw
on them, and how to work in relief or affix precious stone ornaments, and gives
instructions on making casts for relief on the wall and on panels. He describes
in particular how to use bole and how to gild panels. He offers information on
stones suitable for burnishing gold and on the process of burnishing gold, and
then on how to decorate the glories (diadem), how to represent a cloth of gold
and imitate velvet, woollen or silky draperies on the wall or on panels. He
also described how to paint figures. Cennini talks especially about the use of
garlic, the varnish and varnishing of pictures, about the use of egg whites,
about miniatures, about laying gold on paper, decorating cloths in various
colours, about making baldachins, banners, trappings for horses, crests and
mantles for tournaments and ornaments on helmets, about ornamenting coffers or
chests, painting on glass, making mosaics, about the way in which the damp of a
wall may be remedied, where painting has to be done on it, on taking casts from
the figure and face, etc.
Cennini probably finished the writing of his
treatise on painting in Padua, where, in fact, he is mentioned in the said
documents dating back to 1398.
NOTES
[1] Ченини, Ченино - Трактат о сликарству, Фромантен, Рембрант, штампано као рукопис, прев. Драгољуб Кажић, Глобус, НРС, 1950.
[2] Ченини, Ченино - Трактат о сликарству, штампано као
рукопис, прев. Иванка Прикелмајер, Глобус,
НРС, 1950.
[3] I would like to thank Milica Arambašić, of the Library of the Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade, and Aleksandra
Pavlovic, of the "Svetozar Markovic" Library in Belgrade, for having provided me with electronic copies of the two volumes of the Globus publisher.
[5] See: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts:
Nedeljko Gvozdenović.
[6] Hamed,
Said, Kažić, Dragoljub - Contemporary art in Egypt, Cairo, Ministry of
Culture and National Guidance, 1964.
[7] Медић, Милорад - Стари сликарски приручници, I, Издавачка делатност Републичког завода за аштиту споменика културе, Београд, 1999
[8] Prvi
jerusalimski rukopis,1566. Tipik Nektarija srbina, 1599. Knjiga popa
Danila, 1674. Erminija porodice Zografski, 1728.
[9] The text commenting Cennino in Medić's collection reports the year 1889.
[10] The Codex was most likely copied by a
prisoner of the debtors' prison called the Stinche, dating it at the end as of
31 July 1437. Tambroni assumed that the prisoner in question could have been
Cennini himself, back then an already impoverished eighty-year old man, living
in deprivation.
[11] ▪ G. Tambroni, Di
Cennino Cennini Trattato della pittura, messo in luce per la prima volta con
annotazioni del Cavaliere Giuseppe Tambroni, Salviucci publisher, Rome 1821.
▪ G. e C. Milanesi, Il libro dell'arte o
Trattato della pittura, di Cennino Cennini da Colle Valdelsa di nuovo publicato,
con molte correzioni e coll'aggiunta di piu capitoli tratti dai codici
fiorentini, per cura di Gaetano e Carlo Milanesi, Le Monnier publisher, Florence,
1859.
▪ R. Simi, Cennino Cennini da Colle Valdelsa,
Il Libro dell'Arte, reviewed and corrected version on the manuscripts, edited by Renzo
Simi, Carabba publisher, Lanciano 1913.
▪ New edition R. Simi 1913, Marzocco publisher,
Florence 1943.
▪ F. Brunello, Cennino Cennini, Il Libro
dell'Arte, commented and annotated by Franco Brunello, with an introduction by Licisco Magagnato, Neri
Pozza publisher, Vicenza, 1971.
[12] ▪ P. M. Merrifield, A Treatise on Painting
written by Cennino Cennini in the Year 1437, etc., London 1844 (the Eng.
translation of Tambroni’s edition).
▪
V. Mottez, Le livre de l'art ou Traite de la peinture par Cennino Cennini. Paris-Lille 1858 (the French
translation of Tambroni’s edition).
▪ A.
Ilg, Das Buch von der Kunst oder Tractat der Malerei des Cennino Cennini, ecc.,
Wien 1871 (the German translation with comments and notes).
▪ C.Herringham, The Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini, a contemporary practical
treatise on quattrocento painting, London 1899 (a new Eng. translation with a
commentary).
▪ H.
Mottez (Victor’s son, the second French edition, with a foreword by Auguste
Renoir in the form of a letter, supplemented with 17 instructions that were
missing in the first French edition of 1858), Chartres 1911; the second edition
Paris 1922.
▪ W.
Verkade, Des Cennino Cennini Handbuchlein der Kunst, Strasbourg 1916 (the
second German edition including extensive comments).
▪ D. V.
Thompson, Cennino d'Andrea Cennini da Colle di Val d'Elsa, Il Libro dell'Arte,
New Haven 1933 (the first American edition, with commentaries); the second
edition, entitled The Craftsman’s Handbook, New York 1954.
[13] The first volume Cennino Cennini, Treatise on Painting 1, Belgrade 1950, i.e., parts
I, II and III of the book, was translated by Dragoljub Kažić, and the second
volume Cennino Cennini, Treatise on
Painting 2, Belgrade 1951, i.e., parts IV, V and VI, by Ivanka Prikelmajer.
[14] See also chapters XLV and LXVII.
[15] Vasari, Жизнеописание,
I, 397-398; F. Brunello, quoted, 212.
[16] F. Brunello, quoted, 212-213.
[17] Cennino d'Andrea Cennini, The Craftsman's
Handbook, the Italian „Il Libro dell'Arte“, translated by Daniel V. Thompson,
Jr., ed. Dover Publ. Inc., New York 1954.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento